Weekend Notes

While doing some idle blog hopping this morning, I happened on Paula's Coffeetime Quilt Studio and she showed her Siggie Swap quilt made from the blocks we swapped last year. Not just last year, but EARLY last year - February to be exact - and mine were still in a baggie somewhere in the nether regions of my UFO closet. I was ashamed. Abashed and chagrined. Gee - it's been that long? REALLY? So even tho I'm usually a lurker at Coffeetime, I left a comment - "I'm doing mine today!" and Paula e-mailed me back - "I'll be watching!" So I went gold-mining through all those totes of forgotten projects - ("wow! why didn't I ever finish that? It's cool!") and finally came up with the blocks. Spent some time playing around with a layout, and even made a couple more blocks to even out my chosen design, and voila!

At the end of the day I have a half quilted Siggie Swap! That was such a fun swap, and it was fun to look back at all the names. I wonder if anyone's interested in doing that again?
The big news here is still our fires, as it will be for the next few weeks. The smoke is choking - you see UPS drivers and such all wearing masks. The roads are mostly empty - this was highway 101 (our main artery) yesterday at about 10 am -

It's a strange, surreal time. Headlights and kitchen lights on in the middle of the day, and it's so quiet, so still. I couldn't figure out why it was so quiet until late this afternoon; the birds are gone! Where? Who knows - it's smoky everywhere you go. Maybe they found someplace LESS smoky to hide out.

Land of the Midnight Sun - that's what it feels like. It's tough to stay inside and keep all the windows and doors closed 24/7 - I hate that part! - but I bravely hid out in my sewing room with Rhapsody.com and chocolate and sewed and read blogs all day. I even found a brand new blog written by someone in the thick of our closest fire! It's been the best source of information about evacuations and what we can do to help. They mentioned needing simple things like first aid supplies for cuts, scrapes and poison oak so I ran down town and scooped up a bag full, brought it home and gave it to the next truck that went down our road on their way up to the fire. I wish I could do more to help, but probably the best anyone can do is keep praying. Those kids on the firelines need it and California as a whole needs it and our little county needs it.

Un-nerved

We have over a hundred fires currently burning in our county, with sixty of them un-manned because there's just not enough firefighters to be on all of them. The smoke is pretty bad and we're under a health alert to stay inside. So with that order, fans and AC on and a fan venting to the outside, I was settling in for a relaxing day of sewing. Then I heard trucks outside, a LOT of trucks. At first I just stood there with my mouth open, gawking. Then I grabbed a camera......

I missed the fire trucks - but got a FEW of the crew and support trucks.....

Sorry for the out-of-focus pics....these guys were moving pretty quick!

It was a pretty long parade.......

The bulldozers were in the first half along with the fire trucks I missed..... altogether an impressive caravan of maybe 20 vehicles. I called Hunny right away -- "Where are these guys going???" Well, the closest fire is about 10 miles away in the hills behind us, and there's a back road at the end of our road that goes there. Obviously this is a better way to get there than the road in town that we've been hearing about. Now, am I nervous because they're so close, or happy that they're so close? Maybe I'll casually gather up some important stuff.......

LATE UPDATE - we found out tonight that the fire is just 5 1/2 miles away, and our road is now designated as a "FIRE ROAD". Now I'm really fidgety and nervous.......

Home at Last

I think I'll just stay home for awhile......I'm pooped! Our Oregon trip was wonderful as always - and full of surprises!

Look! An empty storefront that literally has my name on it! LOL! There's no way to tell what this might have been, but methinks it's an OMEN that I should open a quilt store, what d'ya think? This was in Brookings, OR and if I can figure out how to do it, it has to be the header on my blog. Of course! On the way up there was a chance I would get to meet up with Pam from My Creative Mind but it didn't work out this time. Next trip! (Hey Pam - next time you're in Forget-me-Knots, look under the counter :-)

We arrived home to find our county covered in a thick blanket of smoke. There was a dry electrical storm right after we left that started over a hundred fires around us. Scary stuff! A storm like that is unusual here, and we won't have rain until probably late October so that's even worse.

My favorite place on the Oregon coast has to be Gold Beach, and we arrived at low tide, the first time I've seen it so low. made for some great pictures of the brilliant green algae that lives under the water most of the time.

Un-retouched photos, I swear! There is an old ship, The Mary Hume that is scuttled there right where she was built in 1880. It's a favorite of mine, I jokingly call her MY boat, and I probably have 100 pictures of her. This was the first time I got to see her high and dry so I have a whole new set of shots!

Neat shot - Well, I have the day to myself and a bunch of un-packing and laundry and cleaning up to do so I'd better get to sewing - LOL!! Finally, a chance to sew!

Pit Stop

Home again after a wonderful visit at Mom's - my best vacation EVER! Three things came together to make it an incredible time - I'm recovering nicely from the former job; I was travelling alone so no one to keep me occupied, and the longest stretch Mom and I have had together alone (mostly) since my brother was born in 1956! I really felt like a candle in the sun - the stress melted away. Ahhhh -- reborn! Even a last minute glitch didn't wind me up - I had it so firmly fixed in my head that the return was on Tuesday that I never rechecked the ticket till Tuesday morning, only to find that my itinerary had been cancelled. HUH??? WTH???? After a few phone calls and careful re-reading turns out my flight was MONDAY night, not Tuesday. Oops. Oh bother. The airline put me on the Tuesday night flight no problem and I'll chock another one up to senility. The drive from Nowhere, Utah to Las Vegas takes around 4 hours give or take depending on how many stops. And it's 4 hours of NOTHING; miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. There's some spectacular scenery along the way in places - the Virgin River Gorge is utterly fantastic, like driving down into a mini version of the Grand Canyon. DAMN hard to keep eyes on the winding road tho!!! I was worried about driving into downtown Las Vegas during rush hour and finding the car rental return place but it was easy-peasy, the place has it's own freeway signs and really good signage to direct you. So now, all relaxed and with feet up, I'll show you a few more highlights. On one of our wanderings, Mom and I stopped by this wagon on the side of the road and bought fresh homemade bread from two young girls, situated just north of Bryce Canyon:

They live quite a long ways away through the desert and back into a "lost" canyon, and as I figured it they must leave home about 4 am to get to their trailer (behind the wagon) to make their bread in time to open for business at 10 am. Whew - I really wanted to support that, what a way to earn your keep.
There's deserted log cabins everywhere you look in south central Utah and they're one of my favorite things - I have LOTS of pictures of empty decaying pioneer cabins. I love to imagine the families that lived there and I do a mental recreation of what the cabin looked like when it was a home. Every old homestead is surrounded by cottonwood trees planted by the original owners - it's the first thing they did. Here's a typical abandoned cabin; think you can envision the family that lived there? Papa in the fields, Mama hanging laundry and Sonny-boy out, ummm........... robbing trains?

LOL - yes, that's the true story of this cabin. This is the boyhood home of none other than Butch Cassidy!
The hundreds of miles surrounding this area was all old Butchs' playground and very easy to see how he could disappear into the wild and escape capture. Terrific stuff!
OK, I have quilty stuff too, never fear. One of the vendors at the Quilt Walk was selling these great seam rippers that he makes himself:

They were so beautiful, and feel SO good in the hand! He uses all sorts of woods in any finish you can think of, and has dozens of designs for the handles. I'm so sorry I'm such a loser I didn't take a picture of his display - it was awesome. He also has stilettos and pens and such - fantastic. His card says "Woodworking inspired by Quilters" Great stuff! Oh yea - those beautiful carved handles have a small flattened area on one side so they won't roll away. That must be the part inspired by a quilter!
While I was gone my daughter suffered her first big heartbreak - she's one to always have her guard up and not put her heart out there for fear of getting stomped on. Well, she was seeing a fella last year that she thought was moving too fast and she broke it of - breaking his heart and putting him into a tailspin. He quit his job here and moved back down to the southern part of the state to recover. So he's been visiting friends here again and she and he met up again and had a few dates and she realized that he really is what she wants and she had been acting like a stupid kid so she told him. And he said forget it. Not that you can blame the guy but still - MY baby is unhappy and what do ya do with an unhappy kid? You make her a quilt! She pulled this pile of fabrics from my closet many months ago -

Funny really because I bought that petroglyph fabric about 5 years ago with her in mind! I'm not sure about that lime green - that might need some fiddling - but I need to get busy and come up with a design. First however, I have this little matter of doing the laundry and re-packing. Hunny and I are leaving tomorrow to drive up the coast of Oregon to deliver a slot machine. Our favorite mini-vacation, with a "few" quilt shops to visit along the way, LOL! Then I get a week more to lay around then it's BACK TO WORK!

Cool Quilts!

Ahhhh.....I could sure get used to the retired life! My adventure in travelling alone with a wrecked wrist is going just fine. My mom is doing great -

This is Mom with a friend of hers..... her life is vastly different from mine and it's fun to see her friends, her stomping grounds and her pastimes. She was patient enough to accompany me when I caught word of a "Quilt Walk" in the next nearest town, 40 miles south. In Panguitch one hard winter over a hundred years ago, the pioneer families were running low on supplies and were in danger of starvation. Six men set out with an oxcart to find food for their famlies. Finding the deep snow too difficult (maybe impossible?) they discovered that they could make good headway by spreading their quilts on the snow and walking over them. In this manner they travelled a lot of miles for supplies. To honor this, the tiny town of Panguitch holds an annual Quilt Walk Days, and it's a doozy! The entire tiny town decorates with quilts!

The Social Hall, smack middle of Main St. Across the street is a tiny park-like area, decorated with what else, quilts.
The local guild put on a show complete with vendors, and I did my duty towards stimulating the economy! The show was not judged and many of the quilts probably wouldn't be considered in judging, but they were wonderful nonetheless. Thick puffy batts are preferred, and there was a lot more hand quilting done than we'd see around my area. One of the vendors had fat quarters for ONE dollar!! My poor Mom's eyes bugged out as she held my bag and I shoveled -- lol! I have more treasures to show you, but it'll have to wait till I get home. I head back to Vegas on Tuesday, and fly home in the middle of the night. (!) There was a story in the paper about some party causing a bit of trouble in Vegas....someone with a Red Geranium in her lapel............

BUSTED!

No, not that way - see how you think? I've spent the last 2 days working furiously in my yard getting drip irrigation all set because, on Monday night I'm getting on a plane all by myself and flying to Las Vegas where I will stay the night all by myself. The next morning I hop in my rental car and drive 4 hours all by myself to spend a week visiting with my Mom in Utah -- YAA!! The key phrase is "all by myself" which was going to be an adventure until I broke my wrist yesterday. Now it's going to be an ordeal. Somehow in all that manual labor, I sustained a navicular fracture of a tiny bone between the thumb and wrist bone. It's also known as a "snuff fracture" because there's a blood supply there that does a weird turnabout and this fracture often causes havoc with the blood supply to the wrist and thus - SNUFFS it. Nice. What the heck did I do? No clue -- I didn't fall on it or anything - it just started hurting so I ignored it. This morning when I woke up I couldn't move it and it hurt like blazes, so off to the ER we go, instead of going to the quilt show which was my first choice of how to spend a beautiful Saturday. Grumble grumble growl. Totally useless left hand - the splint includes the thumb - good thing I'm a righty. So today I'm home with ice and a bad attitude and can't sew and can only type with one finger and there's still plants to be planted before I go. AND I'm missing the quilt show and a day with the grandboys -- doggone it anyway. Well, I can read anyway, so I'm off to see what kind of quilty goodness you're all up to.

The South Rises Again

The Civil War isn't over everywhere, you know. There's still parts of this country where hot spots flare up every once in awhile.
Like my sewing room.
I didn't have this much trouble with my very first quilt! Or any other one I've ever made for that matter! These blocks ended up being such a biasy mess that I nearly wanted to burn the whole thing. There's at least 2 reasons for the mess - first is that the construction method I used left 12 little bias edged HST's on the outer edges of every single block. Those suckers only live to stretch. The second reason could be that I pieced them on 2 different machines - that could have been enough to throw everything haywire. The sashing strips were cut to the measurements of the first 10 or so blocks that were consistant in size, in this case 9 3/4 inches. And the first few rows were fine! As time went on tho, we had DEVELOPMENTS:
This is unsewn, just pinned to show the big difference. Some were a lot worse! I took each row and sprayed and steamed and pressed the mamajammer out of them, doing my level best to shrink 'em. For the most part it worked pretty well ----
Now at least they were in the same neighborhood, and I muddled through getting all the rows joined up. Some of the bigger blocks that are now surrounded by smaller sashing on 4 sides are really really bubbly!! After something like 4 days of intermittent frustration and a few choice %$#*!! at last I had the block body together. And the inside measurement thru the middle was about one and 1/4 inch shorter than those damn bias edges!!! Here's how I deal with inside borders that need to be "persuaded"
Lay it out carefully on the floor and use t-pins into the carpet to hold the border strip and top.
Then I kind of scooch my fingers around underneath to ease the fullness and pin the middle and pin and pin and pin and pin. So that went on SORT OF ok, but the border fabric I picked out was 2 inches too short and of course I didn't have any more. So I pieced it - what the heck, how much worse can it get? And eventually I had 2 borders on and laid it out to see how bad the bubbly blocks were:
YIKES!!! Really Really bad!! Oh wait -- Cuervo's under there playing Quilt Cop......Cuervo with the tequila gold colored eyes. Good thing I like him or those eyes would creep me out. So the next step was to prepare a backing. I'm trying to use stash, and I had a giant piece of incredibly ugly CW that I picked up for about a buck at some big sale --- good enough. I've already decided that this puppy won't ever leave my house and my name sure won't be on it so ugly CW will do just fine. After that I had to stop and smell the roses...........these came from my patio.

After that brief intermission, plus a quick lunch date with Hunny, I layered the thing up and spray basted it and spent a long long time patting and smoothing and finally had a flat, square sammich ready to quilt:

So now the 'Rebel Quilt' (gotta be, doncha think?) is under the needle and durned if it's still not done attacking. Now the thread is breaking every foot or so. And my free-hand straight lines are anything but, and my usually good stitches look like crap. Tonight I pick out the quilting on 2 blocks, and tomorrow it gets all quilted, even if it just ends up being nothing more than an all over design. Or maybe a Confererate flag in every block? LOL!!

Weekend Fun

I still think of it as "the weekend" even tho it makes no never-mind to me now! LOL!
I've been keeping occupied, if not real busy, with some of the long put off chores on my list. One entire day went to emptying the pantry, scrubbing it down and painting the floor then restocking it after careful editing. MICE had moved in, and they promptly got moved out as soon as we knew about it, but they left a few things behind. A few stinky things. 'Nuff said. Here's a Pretty to make you quit thinking of mice in the pantry:

Say -- "oooo, aaahhhhh.."

This spectacular flower is called the Passion Flower after the Passion of Christ, because the stamens look like crucifixes. My big vine is about to explode with them and I can just sit and be awed by them for long stretches. Most of my week has been spent outside, installing drip irrigation all over my yard and planting and weeding and all the rest. On of my former patients told me about planting tomatoes upside down in hanging buckets so I thought I'd try it - if nothing else it sure gets conversation going!

Oldest DGS age 16 -- "Hey gramma - how come your tomatoes are upside down?"
"To see if they'll grow all the way to the ground" (they're about 6 feet up)
"Then why not just plant them in the ground to start with?"
Boys are too logical.
My 4 year old granddaughter came home from a camping trip with a tic behind her ear, and her Mama bravely twisted it out but the head stayed put, as these things will. So off to the doctor with the offending bug in a baggie, and everything is fine. Madeline carried her bug-baggie around for the rest of the day, and late in the evening her Mama heard her talking to it - taunting it really -- "You thought you were gonna drink all my blood but my Mama tore your head off and now you're kinda dead, ARENT' CHA?" My daughter relates that she nearly had her first bathroom accident in 34 years over that one, and so did I. Oh man, that kid is hysterical!
Not too much sewing going yet -- trying valiantly to get the sashing rows of the Civil War fabric, but unhappily the bias edges of all those little triangles have done what bias edges do and grooown some. Some of those blocks are a good 1/2 inch bigger than they should be and forcing them to fit the sashing is frustrating. Oh well -- it's only for me and "it will quilt out", right?

In other sewing, I have a mountain of cotton scrubs that I won't be wearing anymore but no way can I chuck them so I picked out a few to re-work. Cut off the sleeves, gather up the shoulders and take in the sides and suddenly I have a bunch of cool summer shirts. With pockets! The best thing about scrub tops is the pockets - mine always had strange things in them - paperclips, blood tubes, syringes, pens; lots of pens - notes, vials of meds -- who knows? Another top is on the block now possibly to become an apron. I'll show you that one if it comes out OK. Right now however, there's some cookies about to come out of the oven and suddenly a bunch of guys hanging around the family room. Think there's any connection?

Day 2

Yesterday was Day 2 of my new freedom, Monday being a holiday and all. No one to whine at me, no phone calls......OK, 3 phone calls from the clinic -- but I didn't HAVE to answer them! OK, so I did...... quit picking on me, lol! I had a blast on my first full day -- went shopping, pulled weeds, shoveled and hauled 10 big wheelbarrow loads of, ahem......by-product out of the horses yard and into an area that will be a garden. I did some cleaning up and some planting and some sitting -- I even watched TV in the middle of the day! Total waste of time, but my back needed a little break. Hunny took me out to dinner -- because he's worried about my cooking -- and afterwards I got 2 UFOs done:

Two little donation quilt tops that have been sitting around for heaven knows how long. All they needed was quilting and binding. Wanna hear a strange little factoid about me? I LOVE bindings -- that's right, I do. Someone has to! And now I have 2 hand projects to do while I sit in my taxi-cab yellow chair and sip limeade! Staying in the spirit of finishes, I pulled the fans out -- time for them to be a quilt.

They will require a trip to town for the finishing touches, but I'm tough - I can take it. That 40% off coupon will help......

This morning I actually cooked breakfast for myself - yes Kim, I finally did some grocery shopping. They made me show ID but I made it, LOL! I made myself waffles from scratch, and they were great! Strawberry jam and cool-whip and fresh home-made coffee........ahhhh! I could get used to this. I've started a pot roast for Hunny, another first, and have a girlfriends recipe for buttermilk biscuits. Oh man - this is the LIFE!

My weekend of parties was as fun as I thought it would be, except I missed the bluegrass due to back whining. The rest went off without a hitch and were great. Saturday was my new boss's party, and while we're still on the QT, I can show you 'cos you don't know her!! This is Dr. Chris - Wild and Crazy Physician. Hmmm....maybe her cards need to say that? We had a giggle making little double entendre jokes here and there that no one else could possibly get, referring to my future - I love that kind of thing and clearly she does too - kindred spirits I guess.

Now that Day 3 is off to a crawling start, wonder what I'll get into today? Who knows?

Remember

Never Forget.

GONE!

A Fiery Horse with the speed of Light,
A cloud of Dust
And a mighty HI YO Silver!

Or, as Montegomery Gentry sings it -

"This ain't no temporary tearful goodbye, uh uh uh
This is GONE, Gone, GONE, GOOOONNNNE!!

Any way you look at it -- I'm Done. Fini -- over it. OK - so it was an emotional day, lots of laughing, tears, scared people, teasing, panic.......oh yea, and LONG. Got to work about 6:30am and got home at 9:30 - pm. They gave me a great send off:

Beautiful huge basket of plants

Balloons.........

Chocolate roses.......and chocolate covered strawberries

Ice cream sundaes and banana splits.....


Pitchers of margaritas.....



What? Oh - you can't see the ice cream or margaritas? Hmmm.... I wonder why that is?
On my first day of long vacation (remember this is 6 weeks or so) I slept till 6 am! I staggered into the kitchen and fumbled for some eggs and coffee, but couldn't find eggs or coffee so had to settle for cold cereal and diet Pepsi - (note to self; if you're gonna eat at home you should stock some groceries. Just a thought)
Next up -- feed the cat, checking e-mails, showing you what's left of my loot, and get some hand work ready for tomorrows bluegrass day. Or since it's all cloudy and drizzly and sleepy looking outside maybe I'll just go back to bed. LOL -- because I can!!!
Strangely I still have a few clinic related problems swimming in my head but hopefull they'll drown and nothing else will make it's way in. I'd like to be a bubble head for awhile.
Now I can read every blog in the ring and even leave comments!!

10, 9, 8, 7, 6........

It's nearly time for blast-off from the world of high stress, panic and chaos - a move I've been praying for and anticipating and planning for over a year. Then all my hard hearted determination fell apart yesterday when I broke the news to a little lady in a wheelchair and she took my hand in both of hers, crying her eyes out - "Oh no Sweetheart! What will I do without you?" Several of the patients cried, much to my shock, and one grizzled old guy has been inconsolable all week.
I am officially scum of the Earth and shrunken from 5'10" down to a full 2 inches tall.
In a meeting last week, my duties were split between the woman hired to replace me, and 8 other staffers. NINE people. What the heck??? How come I couldn't get so much as ONE assistant but now it's going to take nine??? Oh well.........

In September 2006 I met a docent in a museum 6 or 7 hours away from here. We hit it off immediately and gabbed like old friends for 30 minutes or so, then Hunny and I continued on our trip. Now it's a year and a half later, I get a call out of the blue from her - in the course of our conversation I had mentioned, (among a million other things!) that I was watching out for a Singer treadle sewing machine, in good usable condition. She not only kept my phone number all that time, but when someone showed up with one for sale she remembered me!! AND my phone number! Hastily written, as I remember, on the back of a business card. Amazing, just blew me away. Quilters are the most amazing people on earth. Will I get it? Not sure yet - that's several hundred bucks worth of gas in our truck for something that's not a sure thing, and suddenly that's a pretty expensive machine. Still --- it may be worth it to go see that gal and give her a big ol' HUG! Amazing....
We have a party packed weekend ahead, holy cow! Friday night is my going away party from co-workers, Saturday a party at my new employers house, Sunday a private day-long bluegrass music festival for 250 close friends, Monday a big party at DS and DDIL, and somewhere in there I have to go find my youngest son and birthday him all up. Retired for 2 days and flopped from exhaustion. The bluegrass fest is a fantastic relaxing day. I take some hand quilting and sit in a comfy chair under an oak tree next to the creek and listen to music all day. I always have lots of visitors who want to see the quilting and sit and chat - it's just a wonderful day, I can't wait. Yesterday I got a recognition award at a company luncheon in Old Sacramento, but the funnest part was that we made a bunch of wrong turns and got a stoplight tour of the capitol. The conversation went something like this:
"Where do I turn -- here?"
"Yes -- turn right"
"now?"
"YES!! Get over!"
"Wait -- "
"NO -- get over now!!"
"missed it. We'll just go up a block"
"You can't, it's all one way"
"No it's not, we can turn right here"
"Uh-huh, right into a parking lot!"
"Is this ninth st?"
"There's the Capitol building, so no it's not 9th"
"Look at all the cops! This has to be 9th"
"No, it's L street"
"Do you think Arnold is home?"
"Wait, that says P street"
"Q! It's Q street! -- you have to go left from here"
"Look - there's more cops"
"Please Lord, keep my hands off her neck"
"Hey - how'd we get back here?"
And so we drove all the way around downtown Sacramento. Twice.
It was a blast. Arnold, for non-Californians, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, also known to us as "The Governator" after his Terminator movies. We never did find out if he was around, but the presence of 284 cops might have been a clue.
I promise pictures this weekend - none today because my life is boring.....LOL!

Old Men

The old man had lived on his farm for 50 years, and early on had built a swimming hole and picnic area for his family down at the creek. With his wife passed on and children all grown and gone, the old man hadn't been to the picnic area in many years. One day he decided to take a walk down there and he took a bucket with him, remembering the delicious plum trees along the creek bank. As he got closer he heard giggling and shrieking glee and parting the bushes saw a dozen young ladies skinny dipping in his pond! He made his presence known before emerging, causing the young women to huddle in the deeper water. One called out to him - "We're not coming out till you leave!"

The old man replied "I'm not trying to make you get out naked or sneak a peek - I'm just here to feed the alligator"

Moral - Old men may move slowly but they can still think fast!

And the winner is......

This is amazing, incredible beyond reason. And this really, truly happened this way, as far fetched as it seems. I printed out all the comments and cut them up then dropped them into the bottom of this big vase. I had DGD Madeline stick her hand waaaay down there and stir them up for a long time, no fair peeking.
"Why can't I peek?"
"Because that's the rules"
"Who made the rules?"
"Umm...everyone agrees and it becomes a rule"
"Can you peek?"
"No, Baby, not me either"
"Then how did you put them in there?"

So she did a fine job of mixing and pulling out a name without looking. Here's where the odd part comes in.

The winner is my own darling friend ROSY from Fabricfarie!!!!

All your wonderful comments from all over the globe, and I pull my friend!

Honestly, this is exactly how it happened. Rosy Honey -- I'll be hand delivering this and we'll do lunch!

Thank you everyone for playing along. This is a great way to lure out you lurkers so we get to "meet" you - I've found some really fun blogs and fantastically creative ladies and been so surprised by who stopped by - it was a blast. Hmmmmmm.......what can I cleebrate with a drawing next?

Today was Mother's Day for my girls - 3 of them, anyway. I wanted to take the mommies of my grands out to thank them and acknowledge a job well done. We had a blast, and I got lots of smoochie time with the kids. Here's the girls with their respective kids:

The middle guy Jayden will be 11 months old in a couple of weeks and the kid is WALKING all over the place! Holy cow - I was shocked. Do they really walk that early now? I brought the two on the right home with me, so I'm signing off to go play -- Have a wonderful Mothers Day!

4 Season Swap

My little swap quilt arrived, and it's so cute! Heidi from My Happy Turtle made it and it just looks like a new garden to me. Love those fabrics!
(Shhhh -- be vewy vewy quiet - the baby is sleeping with her new quilt in her new crib)

She also so generously sent along this awesome zippered bag she made:

How cool is that? Love the handle and clasp - I put it in my purse right away and put all my loose change in there. Wallets just don't have change pockets anymore, have you noticed? My purses get full of loose change I can never get to when I need it. Anyhow, THANK YOU Heidi! Go check out her Happy Turtle blog - she has some fantastic bags ----
The crib came from a girlfriend who found it at a garage sale for a dollar. ONE dollar! I've been stalking e-bay trying to find a wooden doll crib like this but I didn't want to pay the huge prices they're bringing, plus 30 or 40 bucks shipping. ONE dollar! What you can't see in the pic is the cute flower decals on the headboard and footboard. The varnish is all crazed and it's pretty dirty but so perfect. We figure it's from maybe the 40's, and looks like a kit some nice Daddy put together. So cool.
Now that the Commish is gone I've rebounded by making more civil war blocks, I can't stop! The blocks finish at a very odd 8 and 3/4 inches, but who cares, they're all the same odd size........

I'm having so much fun playing with the combinations of fabrics. To me, civil war repos tend to look muddy so I'm trying to punch them up by color and value combinations and some careful cutting.

Besides the 30 blocks up on the wall now, there's 12 more on the sewing table that will be done soon. I won't get it pieced together this weekend tho, 'cos it's a Mothers' Day extravaganza! Saturday I'm heading south to take all my grandbabies Mamas out for lunch. Just to thank them for providing me with all those cute kidlets! Saturday evening my kids are planning some kind of fete, but last night we got word that my DDIL's grandfather has died, at age 90. She and my son will be heading to the Bay Area to be with her family. My DD and DGD will be following me home and spending the night and Sunday we'll see what kind of mischief we can get into.
I finally have a few flowers blooming in my yard (now that I planted some, lol) and these are all newcomers this year:

The snowball bush is actually 3 years old now, and this is the first time it's bloomed. Love those big pom-poms, and they last for weeks! The tulips put on a heck of a show, these changed colors from a pale yellow to the bright red-orange, in stages like paint has been dripped down their petals. And the shy lupines are suddenly 4 feet tall and screamin! Ahh, Springtime.

There's still time to get in on the drawing for the shelf sitters - I'll have my DGD draw a name Saturday night and post on Sunday. Just leave a comment on the previous post and tell a friend! I've met some way cool bloggers new to me this way, what a bonus for doing a giveaway.

Have a wonderful MD weekend!